Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Savior, sex, cigarettes and somber

(“Savior” rose out of a Rangashankara-festival-2005 post-play-run-coffee session. I documented and edited the following bit from a conversation I was having with Tushar Shukla, Bindya Das and Nilluka (not sure of surname), all of whom belong(-ed then) to the theatre group MASRAH. Ownership to SSS lies with all of us. Inspired by SSS I compiled (and attached to SSS) other ramblings of my own that had stemmed up during the RS festival…so this version is my own)


Here’s the Savior!
He has come! He has arrived!
Savior? Who Savior and what are you expecting to be saved?
We’re- all four of us, thinking different things; I’m thinking of porn
Fondle me, FONDLE ME?
I like to be called Intellectual but I’m not
Sssh! There’s people here
Hey, they’re used to it
I’ve made good friends with a bunch of hairdressers who clean hair droppings that you leave behind
Enact the music going on in her mind
Songs in the mind when I get up in the morning?
Good news for the modern man
I believe in the total non-existence, in-existence, what the heck is the antonym to existence?
Someone left his VIP bag around…my Kleptomaniac-al instincts kick in
Being singular or being single? Plural-ur
Hip hip hurray
Charlie and Rumplestiltskin were friends
I’m leaving, Literally.
Literally, or illiterally, which of these could lead to illiteracy?
A golden ticket to roll up top tobacco
A graveyard of butts
He’s an objective steno blessed with selective filtering
Palak is good, it makes you an awesome cook
Have you lost weight? Are you sick of loosing the world? I’d rather they loose the question
I’ve worked so un-hard to remove that 1kg off me
Prerogative, purgatory, pubic hair, here we go with Ps this time
That last P reminds me of college boys’ chins!
That last word, Oh! Christ
Vodka dribbling down
I like handicaps
YOU have a borrowed social life?
Can I borrow it?
Mutilating humiliation. An actor not in touch with his body? Is that an excuse, or is that an excuse?
I say my lines in complete touch with my stoic, withdrawn almost sucking within style of speech. Acting! Where is that though? Trying to shakespeare it, eh! Sheer audacity.
But well, with my own lines? Never to draw out the emotion except in the act of vomited writings, making love to paper, or hatred if you will.
Large incapacity to viagral stimulation-reference irrelevant
The page gets abused.
Something to say, itching to, yet not knowing what to, how to, when to… If at all I do blurt out, most in-contextually, it misses its target. And yet, here I am, the one who prides himself as a keen observer of the timing with which one’s vocal conveyor belt enters this land of mud, made of people of mud, which kept alive with a combined elemental dynamo.
Life it is, yes, swimming to live within the ocean or swimming to mate within a man’s procreational body fluid; degrees of difference being their independence in spheres of existence-this life doesn’t think or so they make us believe in the world of biology. But I possess the creative genius of evolution placed safely within the confines of tightly packed calcium deposits…It almost allows me to be, I say almost.
Honestly, where is my honesty, does it lie where I think it does…?
Duran Duran comes undone within the frame of my mind. How does it trigger those memories that should by now be lost in the weirdness of emotion and a future-then, past-now linear movement of time? Erase and rewind? No, just erase it all, once and for all and get rid of the tape. Clean that slate, squeak squeak…does it help?
No?
Then go figure
Ecstasy removed, action in place like an apparitional encounter. Help! Screams the mind but engages in the same activity hoping that the ray of gold will penetrate.
Does my prayer trigger compassion so the ray hits faster?
Does this require the ray to think?
Newton would be scandalized! Inertia far removed, momentum yet closer, a moving, thinking, feeling ray of light! Ok, we were speaking of life, and some light. Lets pick an L, say life, Life, LIFE! Life post theatre festival, just a thought, where does it head dude? A friend’s question triggers my train of thought. I mean, today is the end of this exhibition of drama forms-the festival, just like that, and who decides that? What the heck is the matter with this place with lights all over, catering to the theatre cult? Is anyone affected? Does it move something within you?
Movement
I understood why she doesn’t talk, why the unresponsiveness. I don’t claim to know all of it, just what she told me. So I’m going to let her smoke her cigarette, all in peace, all to herself.
Culmination
Private space, public space, private parts and public arms, all exposed, all barred, naked and fully clothed.
Rescuer role-play, I don’t do it so often now, but I still do, and how do I rescue? She’s deep within and right into, all floating and drowning but not dying; she takes a U-turn and turns in the wheel.
“You know this is a racist country!”
“Don’t talk to me like that!”
Yes, write it all down, whether it makes sense or not he tells me, sooner or later it will.
The eraser has turned as hard as stone, it smudges the word and stains my page with no act of violence; the page doesn’t tear.
Soon this city will turn enmeshed, a city of hole-residences, and you will be asked to find a gap, your physical gap, just yours. So I wonder, when the sheep herd together, comes along the Shep-herd-er?
Deepak Srinivasan

Experiments with storytelling...

[This is an excerpt from my writings that “experiment” with trying to unravel the hidden writer (within his stories). The idea is to not be stunningly autobiographical but weave into the story itself, the character of a storyteller…as one significant player]


Story-time is good fun, as a narrator when one decides to take a journey that may be filled with fantasy and adventure. However, it is a little unnerving when the narrator has also been an active participant in her/his story. Most narrators do bring in a part of themselves in essence or with hidden symbols of their hidden moments from linear earth time. Some however, decide to take it to the extreme and talk about their lives openly. People may attribute why they do it to their (author’s) need for exhibitionism. Some compassionate psychoanalysts may grant the need for acceptance and approval, not gotten from relationships in life, which the narrator tries to now fulfill. I say compassionate because they may not judge. If one does judge, as many will do, it cannot be helped. The narrator himself, however, remains indifferent to the reactions. He may be narcissistically involved with reliving his own story, reminiscing about the moments that only glimmer in his mind’s river like the moon. Or he may be just saying his story in a way that will allow for some readers to identify with and thus aid them in their own process. One that may be smoother and allow mental brevity of emotion that usually accompanies thoughts of being the only alien in the world of normal folk. Altruist!



[I don’t yet have a title for this bit, I’m still in the process of writing out this short story or a novel or whatever it will land up being, if I ever approach finis. For now I’ll call it…]


Carlos’ Contention

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“War and all the gore, may seem strange to you, may seem tough to play, but we do go out”. How in the wide world do they do that? The character however, is born to live the life, one that would put the tin soldier to shame. Maybe not- one that would probably make the story a fairy-tale. But we probably have a fairy-tale for you, one that you may not expect. Now however, we are talking war.

I must admit that it is tough for me. I am no war junkie, and no memories of being a war-veteran in my past life have made their landing. But I see it in his unruffled face that almost seems to indicate that there is a calm residing within. Go closer and you will see the pain. I met Carlos just now. Sorry, I lie, I just called him Carlos, but I met him a couple of years ago, in my mind.

Carlos lies in the hospital bed, his leg all tied up and hanging from the ceiling. You have seen him before, haven’t you, just that he could have had a different name. Injured in war, lying all grouchy, waiting for his co-character, co-actor to give him the cue to which he responds with myriad emotions- anger, or perhaps depression, dejection, remorse, maybe a gruesome story about his comrades and he- yeah, yeah even better.

Hey, but now I must tell you off. Carlos’ story is a little unique because he came out of my mind. I think you’ll have to be the judge of that but you can’t do it just now. Be fair to me.


White all around, truly hospital-like. But it can’t be kept clean all the time round. Its war, and there are patients to care for. White sheets, getting the grime off the metal headrests of beds, keeping dust off your pillow and window-sill, these were some of the most insignificant things to hospital staff. There were tissue remnants and blood to clean off from instruments, groaning Jimmy to silence, weeping Willy to clean and Terry needed a shot. Warrior names eh? Sound more like doggie dogs, but hey, we’re talking informal here, and Carlos knew them by these names anyway. So I thought I’d introduce you to Carlos’ surrounding mates.


“I usually had some song running parallel to my thoughts, but it’s good it’s gone. Damn I tried so hard to get the song that stuck, off my mind, while driving off the freeway. Wonder when I’ll get my hands on my music again…actually I don’t think I want to. Time is past those. Wanda must have gotten the letter I sent her. I just want to be in bed with her now, with all this pain, I’d still enjoy touching her skin. Oh God, boring! Really boring man! This kills, I want to jump out of here and run! Sigh”

And here you thought he would be brooding about war with its political undertones. Where is the war, whose side is he on, is it over, is he dying, do we really need another one of these, can we leave please? Maybe I should throw in some sex to make you stay? A little fantasizing perhaps? Oh but no, we can’t really make him do it you see! There are mostly men around Carlos- and then I’ll be yelled at for adding to gay literature and accused for trying to sensitize you to the hard sex lives of men in the army. I don’t intend to win a booker with this and, I sense I am now leaning toward the cynical. So I’ll stick to being storyteller. I truly have a story to tell.

“Damn it, the pain, go away, go away! What happened to the coffee? Caffeine now should be ok for me, there shouldn’t be yet another damn discussion in their heads about the spine shit. A New York street, that’s where I’d rather be now, at the Starbucks window by macys, macys, macys…oh macys, the thanksgiving parade will happen soon, damn it! I wish…

Fuck it. Fuck the goddamn it! Being this far away, what the heck! It isn’t fair! America sleeps now while I die bits…Sigh. Where, where did that woman go now? Where did she…Wanda…”

I thought he might be thinking this rather trivial string of thoughts, judging by the way he sits in my imagination, but I don’t think it quite adds up. You see, the energy- it is somber, morose, and very troubling, and yet, I know that the scar is not about war. It is not about life’s purposes, not about questions, dejection, disillusionment, hold on, it probably is, how do I know? He flutters like a flame, his energy waxing and waning; all I see is the solid outline of his physical form against the wall, the shadow of which looks like Shrek. So what could he be venting about? The lack of say, good food, his wife’s absence, missing New York…I can’t say. I will wait till he utters something to give him lines to say. Strong Coffee.

Sometimes there are people, people who like to remove themselves from the routine and suffer. They suffer as a consequence of their inner self that demands service. Service to man, service to earth, service to a cause…

The service may not be a consequence of divine alignment, but more out of a sense of duty. I am one such person at this moment in time. I know of an exact opposite. She is Catherine, yes, another C. I saw her too in my mind earlier, just that I thought I’d christen her Emily or Elisa, but Catherine is what came to be a moment ago. Catherine, the feminine was also called in Wuthering Heights- strong-willed, talkative, rebellious, destructive, obsessive and passionate, but this lass won’t be like her. I already know it. All Catherines are not the same.

So, isn’t it delightful to have two people who don’t speak? They want me to tell their story out aloud without having to exert their being even the slightest bit. But they will talk to each other, will have to.

“Mom was frightened of lizards, they had a mysterious power over her, I wonder why. I am ready. I need to sing some song…”

“Carlos break out of your reverie and say hello!”

“Ugh, Hello, what time is it Sandy”

“Uh, you have been asking me that question for ages brother. Quit it now, and relax, looks of it, a long time for you here still…meet Catherine Terries, by the way, she is here as a volunteer to help all the bulls here clean up their sickness act”

“Hello Ms. Terries, you said?”

“I didn’t Sanchez did, but yes I’ll be Cathy around here, so…” and so he smiled- for me that was a relief. After having suggested male and female characters in a worn-out time period, romance had to creep in. If he wasn’t going that way, what could I do? Oh, what would I do! Smile a little Carlos, and give me hope.



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“Hi Carlos, nice day isn’t it?”


He looks up at her. It’s already been a day; I don’t quite know what happened and how the introduction went. I wrote that a while ago. I had actually abandoned project, hadn’t even turned my computer on in days. Then one fine day it happened, cold war at home. In the process of groping in the dark, trying to find my identity, testing the grays of my aura, I showed up here within the confines of cyber world. Pretty good- all that that went up while scrolling down, I thought. I reached a funny end though, a line in quotes greeting Carlos.

So, a day has transpired. I really cannot say and am too scared to look into weaving out a-what-might-have-happened at the cost of sounding pretentious. We will take it from here the way it is, the way I feel about Catherine and Carlos now.

“Sun in my eyes and a silhouette, oh a woman, who is this? Ah! Yes the woman from yesterday”. He looked at her with sun in his eyes, no recognition. All she saw was a bored man staring at her, with nothing to say. He was yet another man, human she would think of him as, if she were in a mixed gender environment. So she had nothing extra in her eyes either, just that usual warmth. Yes, she was turning around with a casual tilt of her body moving about its axis freely, not being imprisoned by anything.

Light does funny things, I think. What is it that we see, nothing but patterns of light. We call it myriad things. I used to think that eyes were like holes or windows, and someone was hiding inside me like my body was a home and looking out through these holes to get a view. But hey, think about it, if eyes were sealed with something concrete, real tough, and the person inside would not be able to get a glimpse of the happenings, then how will they survive, won’t it get claustrophobic? I mean, won’t it be really dinghy and scary?

On tangents again but truly, I think there is a connection. I never meant to ramble unnecessarily with all the light talk but I have reached here with this thought, starting from what was happening in Cathy’s visual apparatus. Seems like I went too far into a star system- let’s get back to earth. I’ll talk of psychologists now, the special ones who research on human behavior and move the science of understanding the whys of our mental existence ahead. I don’t specifically mean the ones who study the functioning of human brain and behavior academically. I more generously include everyone who study or observe phenomena, some brave enough to write it down and put them on shelves for you and me to read. There’s all this talk I’m fascinated with, about how the eyes even read traces of communication- whatever spectrum one living species tries to transmute to another.

Catherine suddenly froze, her mind that is but the body wouldn’t obey and so she careened. All but her eyes were prisoners to what shot out of his eyes- and then she was released. Her being registered something but couldn’t actually decipher it, and her conscious mind cloaked her with embarrassment and then some grace to recover. She left confused.

Words going in a serpentine fashion. I am wishing this process would take me and you through a journey where Catherine will shine forth as an adept right-brained person. She will help Carlos unknot the mess at his core. Will she do this by kindling his sexual energy? I certainly hoped not to create yet another done-to-death mechanism of human bonding. But chemistry between man and woman must explode thus or should it?

When we talk about bonding, it’s either physical or platonic but depiction of intimacy and connection between the opposite sexes is fashioned with the intercourse. Penis-brain you call me, but look around you. Literature is running amok with Kama Sutra clothed in verbose finery. I am almost joining the club. Voice in my head- “You wish!”


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…and you give yourself away, and you give yourself away…” U2. Yes. Those Irish boys


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“I’m thirsty…(aloud) hello, can I have some water please, parched throat. Thanks” “Coming” From within Carlos’ fort the little man sees a woman approaching with a bottle. A whiskey bottle with water. Touch the bottle with his fingers, cold and slippery, body takes over, unscrewing the bottle he gratifies his throat. “Is there anything else you want for now?” “How do you survive?” “I beg your pardon?” “Oh gosh! You using outlawed phrases… I meant the boredom, doesn’t it eat you up?” “(Chuckles) Oh that? Well I signed up to be subject to that too remember? Besides I keep busy” “How now, common. (Pause) Yeah, you privileged walkie talkie (grins)” “Ok. Got to go” “Hey wait, what did I say?” “Nothing much, just the usual guy stuff” “With walkie talkie? I meant I have my legs wound up…” Silence “I’m sorry, what?” “Nothing- Carlos is it, yeah, Carlos…I got to go and take care of a few things…will see you around.” “Ok” Little man sees her walk away. A minute later there is a swish sound. Little man is able to see as the holes open up. She is walking past again. “Life brought you back to these parts again eh?” Silence and pause “Looks like you don’t really like my jokes. I resent being treated thus. Do you know how hard it is for me to have this extrovert coat on? IT’S DAMN TIRING! And I seriously wish you women would not need all that wooing…and cooing. I like my moroseness and that’s where I’ll go. Get the heck out of my face all of you” “I didn’t ask you to get into your best coat anyway Mister. I am sorry though. I truly am. I didn’t wish to be that way. It just ticked me off; you sounded like you were talking about women- as long legged models came to mind, which I’m not. Then I realized that you were talking about the wireless machine phones which made me sound like a machine. Even worse. I lost your meaning midst it all” The little man stares at the woman and starts laughing. Feminists in the 70s weren’t a rarity and were highly desired. Men wanted to put off that flame by taming the shew- raw sex appeal. Carlos took the term gentleman very seriously. He didn’t froth in the mouth to devour his prey, he wasn’t on that trip even. Carlos just encountered the femme fatale that rose up in defense of her clan, with all communication misunderstood anticipating attack. “I’m bored and this helped a little, but I’m sad now that it’s over” I can’t really entertain Carlos. Sorry”

Kundan Shah’s “the three sisters”- A film review

No, not the mythic goddesses of dhan, vidya and shakti but quite the ironic contrary, Teen Behnein is a film about impoverished three sisters, painfully journeying through the day in their lives that is their planned last…
Kundan Shah in his introduction said that he hopes this film will bring at least one target viewer to her senses and avert the crime from happening; the technique he uses to facilitate this is a mixture of both realism and fictional hopefulness. It proved to be an effective use of the medium to communicate the problem, though I have some issues with treatment, which I will raise a little later. However, it was a unique film experience as a result of having had, amongst the audiences, women who belonged to the NGO sector, many who were in touch with the reality of the situation. A heated debate about the reality of the situation, the crux of the problem, intellectualization of issues and gender mud-slinging, amongst many other revelations I think was the entirety of the experience of the issue for me. Polarization of sorts that instantly resulted, men trying to be cheeky and patriarchal, some calling it a non-issue, some saying it was women against women and some others being quite feminist in voicing that dowry’s new avtar is men seeking out women with avenues to earnings. The women on the other hand suggested that solutions and points of interest discussed around the issue were hackneyed, one woman voting out the director’s viewpoint that compulsory women’s education and economic independence would innervate channels to walkout of the ensuing social cardiac arrest for the girl/ woman. Her argument was such: economic freedom was on its way in many sectors, yet we being the way we are, social encrustation click-shut in place would still not allow empowerment. Yet another, furious (as much as I was) about the fact that marriage was made such an important event in a woman’s life, that it become an overwhelming moment blurring her prior and future existence, identity and achievement…the probable demon in the closet. Strongly driven passion with which these women spoke out was a disturbing thing for civic minded in the crowd, causing instant murmurs of madness. It seemed to the sane amongst us apparently, that feminist jingoists were biting off more attention than they deserved at the forum. If one listened closer, a lot of what was being said was not passion-fruit NGO style. The furor and the raging fire-breath tone surely could have been avoided, but there were some real genuine suggestions to what could confute this mayhem of woman-trampling rampant in all sections of modern India.
The reason I have spent reviewing the discussion more than the film is because the success of a socio-political movie, for a country like India, lies in discussions it triggers. I for one am extremely intrigued to discuss the philosophy of the filmmaker and the content depicted, with an honest probing of perceptions amongst the audiences. Shah’s self-confessed ideology about content being larger than artistic and technical endeavor is something that sat smiling to my heart. Personally, film-making in India has turned (and I’m not even going close to mainstream endeavours which in my own words is nothing but bull *#*% but even alternate, “art-film” circles) mostly about technique and utility of sophistication. Sadly however, all attempts to turn up the jazz and keep pace with our western primate brothers are left soulless. I think film in a developing country is a medium that is very labile, and a filmmaker is very responsible for what he needs to say. Leave out the superficial narcissism to your subject and demystify filmmaking.
Ok, so much for that, having said that, paradoxically I wish to argue against the same point made above, but let me clarify. Content is of utmost importance, but what leaves me squirming in my seat is, not an unaesthetic, but a (in the name of sticking to realism and) depicting-truth-as-it-is disempowering theme. Let me tell you what gets me going, a visual journey brimming with novel ways to look at a problem; the term I ‘d like to use is treatment. Content and honesty and social responsibility is all fine but I’m beginning to think that re-hashing in the name of realism, cultural learned helplessness prototypes for characters does nothing useful to the society. It lands up re-enforcing negative role models and cliches of how we think roles within, (ex: lets say a middle class family) needs to be mete out. This era of trying to report the real causes for what-they-are-the-way-they-are, needs to pass. What needs to emerge is a filmmakers weaving of choices that are alternative to the ones chosen by their archetypes in the past, on celluloid or elsewhere in Indian media history. So, build characters that would, in the given situation, deal with it differently or leave the baggage behind and make fresh choices. I’m not asking for a utopian panacea of a movie, but for filmmakers to make a practical leap of faith within their researched backdrop so that empowerment may happen. My argument is, awareness is building, (be it about AIDS, dowry, women’s issues, child labour etc) but the ways of responding to the problem remains folklore since we don’t have tools within our cultural teachings to handle it.
How did Kundan Shah go about the film? Finally I get to the film, but I’ve gotten to the point much earlier, and I hope you agree. Cloyingly poignant but well-crafted narrative is centered on Lata, Machhli (the middle born) and Choti (the little one) three of whom are annoyingly siamese. (Something I credited to craft later and relished based on Shah’s statement that girls with this sort of psychosocial trauma are often autistic and tend to stick to one another relinquishing all individuality). Lata is painfully self-deprecating with all the symptoms of the responsible older one-sobriety and blind sense of being her parents’ bonded labourer. The middle one is supposedly the prettier one (I personally found Lata to be the more attractive one) who many a groom-came-seeking-Lata’s hand-in-marriage drooled over instead. Choti is the rebel-with-reason, impulsive, and of course with the ‘truth-tongue’. What’s intriguing in the plot is the delving into the interchangeable psyche of these three young women, the control they share over one another and the inevitable looming-doom they hold on to but deny self-responsibility in the act. Lata with an MA in literature is so brainwashed that she solely regards her existence to rely on the institution of marriage as a felicity that will bring legitimacy to her life. She seeks a non-existent relationship with the man who came and left. None of the other sisters really try to take her, even for argument’s sake beyond these marriage dreams of hers; on the contrary singing soon-to-be wedding songs to incite her already jarred psyche. Choti, a firebrand with practicality is unable to seek a way out of the romantic deaths the older two have spelt out for themselves (and unconsciously woven the little one’s fate into the web). Her existence, her age, and her character, replete with incomplete social skills and sole dependence on the siblings render her powerless. The three hang off the ceiling, a scene shown suggestively and powerfully. However, Shah doesn’t end with this agony post the knuckle cracking build-up. A surreal appearance of the three on a television show titled the achievers as the post-climax talks strongly of the director’s hope for the future and what he perhaps wishes will shape the end to this blackguard history of our nation, repression and commodification of women.
As a last few comments, I think I now seem to understand KS’s way of crafting this relief moment for the target audience who will perhaps see it as I wish them to. It should function as “stop-and-turn-it-around-moment” from what it fatalistically moved toward, and in doing so, allow fresh ways of response that may shift the power to our inside.

WHAT’S YOUR PARTY FOR SAJNAA?

Yeh tara wo tara, har tara…feature film Swades’ lyrical rendition on miniscule individual achievement in comparison to mammoth accessibility through group melding and synergy, India in its 50 odd-eth year of independence, and a Gandhi Jayanti made cool by Bollywood nods. The gap, a wide gaping fissure that exists in all forms and states of an Indian existence probably symbolizing Dvaita (duality) as its quintessential reality… The one I’m concerned with, a life lived that shuns any form of personalized ideology. Many Indians have philosophies to give out, and reasons to why it can’t be lived. The modern Indian, the average and above average Indian youth on the threshold of a something that seems to be happening…threshold to what? Good question, but lets just stay with the jazz in that term, it’s brain wracking to delve into any cultural implication and build on it. Instead, Dance with me baby, won’t you dance with me all night? Party, party party…crooning radios, page 3 newspapers with strangers’ faces pasted on the dance floor…
Finger pointing on either side: Yellow, black, blue and red fences running amok among sectarians like Age, Caste, Sex and Economy, not to forget Arts (no, not Bully-wood, no art there!), Education (oh don’t get me started!), Technology, Sciences (what Indian science pursuits? never heard of those), Politics, Culture. Beautifully shaped fingers raised and aimed out so well, military training helped with precision “in aiming” I suppose?
India in the last two years as seen through my eyes, my forbearance and my angst just unfolded. Look closer, as beneath the prose exist clichés, age-old and redundant used by yet another Indian. Life a few years abroad and I began to think that India is an object too flawed that needs to be set right. Unsorted emotion with forced intellect in action, masked with loads of “If only these were done…” and “If at all people could learn to…” and other such practical NRI (for want of a better acronym) approaches. This backed by a “it will not be all talk, I’ll move my finger too” motivation and what have you? Voila!, time worn, yet another Nodding Resigning Indian…almost there but not quite. The self-bashing comes and goes, the other-than-I bashing remains, but less intellectual, more in the moment, sans generalization.
What about compassion? I’m not quite there yet, but will the C word enter my frames of reference? Again, I don’t know because in my mind, implementing compassion activates statements of “be empathetic with us because we are bound by fatalistic choices” (the literary oxymoron was first observed in our culture don’t you think?) but yes, compassion is required with processes I realize. That is because as a very, very old “culture” which seems to have allowed very little cultural progress in thought (as I seem to think), we don’t seem to recognize that ideas create the world- push it forward. A stale compost of mental constructs that we allow not just to self-obstruct but also all the while, making sure these traps are set in the path of others around us. When awareness is completely asleep in the domain of recognizing our patterns in the outside world, it is irrelevant and incomprehensible to mention self-inquiry. So, this lack in awareness of entangled psychosocial complexity backed by eons of learned helplessness- or taught, imposed and now, inherited (maybe I’ll suggest to my geneticist peers to look for cultural genes that hinder us) rule the roost. Maybe the gene that aggressively markets learned helplessness is what needs to be found, the cure will lie there…or the blame could.
Blame, a term that gambles its winning way all through our interactions along-with its Siamese twin, guilt; shall we talk about these babies of mother culture? Wonderfully shaped biological pointers are raised in blame and presto, precisely our own, unable to handle the rising guilt does the same in another direction. Look, it’s raised and pointing north! Just avoid being in the line of fire-fingers and you’ll be fine, Mama told you. So in trying to jump, hop and skip, Blame the Guilt is played with the rules of Chinese Messages, never for a moment locally manifest longer than a second. If the impact would be taken in for a moment, however, surgery could be performed and two separate babies called Responsibility could be created- two unhindered babies that had abilities to respond. No more appeasing the audiences Bollywood style, just simple self-answerability and efficient functionality in the universe. Oh, to see those fingers drop!
Lifestyle pundits, media masqueraders, economic forerunners, governance gorges, Indian-ness markers, culture black-cats, yes, many more such succinct nouns to describe those fingers that stand raised, not as guideposts for self and the other, but as agents of hindrances that sneakily tend to create confusion for the other. How else could I express this?
Hold on just a moment Mr. Srinivasan, you have quite gaily thrown around terms! Please expound on some without the legitimate vagaries usually allowed in their usage. Excuse me alter ego, there’s no space for all of those but I’ll choose one- my favourite, another C word, Culture. In college, during one of the literature classes (because only Literature Lecturers would do this) we tried to examine the implications of the word, Culture. What resulted from classroom discussion was that culture translated to religion, values, patriotism, geography, cuisine, sexual beliefs, sexual practices, political agenda, personal space and music & the arts. In my mind at that time, culture is what reeked from walls of my room. In biology, I had to deal with the component that very passively supported and provided space and nutrient to exist. In my recent understanding, culture seems to be individual and collective (albeit conflicting) consciousness of our world’s operative. I will leave out what Webster has to say, much thanks Mitwa.
Deepak Srinivasan